Jon Grimwood - redRobe

Everybody was already awake and watching him. No one had slipped away in the darkness. Even fat little Louis had sat out the stink, the distant howl of wolves heading towards the slaughter ground and the dying down to embers of the small fire that was all there was to keep predators at bay. All of them had survived the night, hovering on the insomniac edge of anxiety-apart from Axl, who felt like sleep had crept up behind him with a cosh.

Maybe they’d been afraid he’d wake before they escaped, or perhaps it was the silver monkey sitting shaking glass straws of amphetamine from a tiny compartment in the zytel butt of his snubPup who’d kept them in order. Axl was sure he’d checked that compartment and the last time he looked it contained a cleaning kit for the Browning.

‘Have a good night?’ Kate asked.

A day came and went. Most of the time Axl rode holding Mai’s bridle, Ketzia and Kate riding close behind, like silent shadows. Occasionally they all walked the rocky track that led across the bleak, windswept plateau, leading the exhausted animals behind them.

No one talked. What breath they had was needed for breathing.

All the same, enough water gathered in pools for the ponies to be able to drink. It was grass that was scarce. What little there was looked half-hearted, yellowing and spindly, filling the flat spaces between scrub and moss-covered rock.

They did that next night without fire, Axl and Rinpoche staying awake to keep guard. Mai slept in Kate’s arms and both Tukten and Axl tried not to notice. By morning Rinpoche was gone again and Axl was so exhausted he could hardly ride in a straight line.

‘Wolf,’ said Tukten and Axl stopped. The shag-haired boy was pointing to where a grey shadow slunk between altars on the distant charnel ground.

‘And there,’ Axl muttered, ‘and…’ Oh, sweet fuck. Axl was about to point again when a flash of sunlight kicked him suddenly awake, an adrenaline rush snapping his eyes wide open with a squeal of violin. Someone was watching them from a low wooded hill on the far side of the charnel ground and Axl had a nasty feeling he knew exactly who it was.

‘Problems?’ Kate asked unkindly, drawing alongside. She was holding Mai’s rein, though Tukten still stood at the pony’s head holding its bridle. They’d spent a lot of that morning scowling at each other and pulling the bewildered animal in opposite directions.

Axl shook his head, wondering why anyone would bother with field glasses. But no sooner was the question asked than Axl knew the answer. Samsara didn’t provide PaxForce with GPS, no chain of spySat hung up there running stealth mode. If anyone wanted to track him they weren’t going to squat at some satellite-feeding JCIT deck, focusing in close enough to see if he’d shaved, while their thumb hovered over some floating trackball that picked out options between blind and vaporise.

PaxForce wanted Mai and so did the Cardinal. At least, he wanted Joan and if the kid really did have Joan’s dreams stacked up inside her head…

‘It’s getting messy, isn’t it?’ The voice was amused, kind but a little contemptuous. It was Mai all right, but not really any version he knew. Her clothes were the same, that red jacket, mud-splattered felt trousers. The childish mouth was still both downturned and pouty and her hips soft with puppy-fat but her expression was more intense. And if Axl didn’t know better, he’d say her eyes had changed colour. Or maybe it wasn’t a hue change, just a rearrangement of the fractal dust that made up her iris pattern. Whatever was looking out at him, it wasn’t a fourteen-year-old girl, or not entirely.

Axl found himself nodding. Yeah, messy was one way to put it. If his guess was right, Colonel Emilio and half a dozen conscripts were camped in the other side of the charnel ground.

And if they weren’t armed to the teeth they were still a hell of lot better-equipped than his group.

‘ Your group?’ Mai snorted. ‘You think half the people here wouldn’t slit your throat in the night if they got the chance?’

No, he didn’t. Without intending to Axl glanced over to where Kate crouched, retying the laces of her Caterpillars while she pretended not to be trying to listen in.

‘She’d be first in the line,’ Mai’s voice was regretful. ‘You hurt her, you know. . . And just because you’re broken doesn’t mean that everyone else is ... Of course,’ Mai nodded at Kate, ‘it doesn’t mean they’re not either.’

She was gone before Axl could reply, her hand reaching out to stroke Kate’s cheek as she went past, leaving Kate staring after her with something like disbelief in her blushing face.

‘Aren’t you going to stop her?’ Kate’s voice grated on Axl’s thoughts. He was about to ask stop who? But he didn’t need to. Mai was walking steadily towards a pile of corpses while ahead of her grey shadows raised their heads, as if they could pick up her scent over the sickening miasma of rotting bodies.

Axl grabbed his snubPup and rolled to his feet, pounding after Mai. 148 shots to a magazine and he had one magazine rammed up through the butt of the Browning and a spare tapped alongside. About seven and half seconds of full-on killing time, not like he really had bullets to spare.

Only he didn’t need the gun. Axl didn’t even need to pull back the ratchet that jacked the first shot into the breech, though he did it anyway. It was the combat equivalent of sucking his thumb.

‘Shhhh,’ Mai hissed as he ran up behind her, pumped with fear and ready to hit the ground and roll, taking out the three wolves directly ahead. ‘You’ll scare them.’

‘Scare them?’

Mai nodded and knelt briefly beside a corpse, closing the eyes on the body of a man who had one leg chewed off at the knee and was wearing his small intestines draped round his groin like a withered grass skirt. ‘They’re cleaners,’ Mai said reaching for a grey shadow. Instead of taking her hand off at the wrist, the wolf whined like a puppy and pushed its narrow skull up into her palm.

‘Fucking great,’ said Axl, ‘they’re all God’s creatures and you’re fucking St Francis.’ He stared at the broken body of a child, little more than ragged scraps of dark flesh on bones picked nearly clean.

‘You like this?’ Axl asked.

‘I don’t have a problem with it,’ said Mai. She stopped a few seconds later, put her head up and sniffed the air like one of her shadows. ‘Too much,’ she insisted, ‘too much for the horses. Cut them free ...' Behind him, Axl could see Rinpoche already slitting straps that fastened on saddles and slicing through bridles and reins.

‘That’s...'

‘ A good idea,’ Mai told him. ‘Unless you plan to be a sitting target?’ She smiled grimly. ‘As opposed to a walking one…’ There wasn’t an answer to that.

‘Does all this really make sense to you?’ Axl asked Mai, feeling so tired he found it hard to think.

She nodded, smiled broadly and pointed to a blond toddler lying naked on a stone slab, his small arms and legs broken to give the vultures a head start.

It was Mai, not Axl, who led the exhausted group towards the centre of the charnel ground, walking ahead oblivious to the increasing number of bodies and their stink. The wolves stayed strung out in a line along either side of the party as if they were acting as outriders.

Mai appeared not to notice the wolves, except when one thrust its wet nose against her hand, but then she didn’t seem aware of anything really, apart from Father Sylvester’s glass blade warm between her breasts and a soft voice muttering in her head, and much of the time she didn’t even notice that. It was the daydreams that went with those mutterings that made her gasp, shake her head and shiver…